Sunday, October 24, 2010

When you are this far from Jaffa Gate, all one can do is post love letters...

Ismael writes again. Periodically my Palestinian friend Ismael, Jaffa Gate's bard and genuine Professor of Peace to the visitors of Jerusalem and the peoples of the world, updates his plea to rejoin him in Jerusalem. His emails are always piercingly terse, warm little notes of heartfelt expectation:

How are you I hop you are doing will, ..., i send you the translation of "bride and mistress of cities jerusalem" in arabic i wish you fo publish it so the people can find it on google.

in holand an old man "75 years old" he make a music and they sing it.

now we are doing a music to sing it in arabic.

hop to see you soon in jerusalem

I love you, your Bro Ismael.

Heaps of love back at you habibi! First of all, I'm flattered (though skeptical) that anyone could think my blog is a portal to feed the Google bots. But on behalf of a worthy author, I will not expend any effort in diffident dawdling and trepidation to get this baby out there. I'm happy to oblige, dear friend...

I'm most glad to post this in its original, unadulterated form, knowing that the authors of Ismael's Arabic-English dictionary are probably fans of late-18th century British Literature. Not that the intriguingEnglish translation is not without its merits, but one suspects a little work is needed to contemporize things a bit. Unfortunately, I don't know Arabic to be able to contribute my thoughts usefully for a modern English translation. (Maybe any Arabic readers out there can help us out.) But I can read just barely enough to see that the poem Ismael sent is more expressive, unabridged and heartfelt. Here is "The Bride and Mistress of Cities...Jerusalem" as penned by Ismael Obydat in its original language...

Improv

I practice architecture and urban design in Charlotte, N.C., often as a consultant in transportation projects. The rest of my time I help layout the developments of the clients of the firm I work for. While I'd like to be an urbanist, if anything, I'm an expert in the layout of parking lots. For now, just consider me an "aspiring urbanist", until governments allow me to practice what I preach.